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Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Happy Halloween to those that celebrate it! I've been working on a new journal for a while after being inspired by Barb Owen's UStream videos. You can check those out here.

I finally finished it up last night and if you are interested you can watch that on my very first Ustream here. Ustream is nothing like YT videos if you are not familiar with them. It is real time and we do a lot of chatting and have a lot of fun. You can "Follow" on there also and if I broadcast again you can join in the chatting fun. Otherwise you can view the recordings and fast through the boring bits.

Ok, on to pics of the journal:

This was created out of a Town House cracker box with die cuts from chipboard that were covered with sewing pattern papers. Then I painted with acrylic paints and added some dimension with metallic copper acrylics and also metallic gilders paste.

I chose to bead the binding while sewing in the signatures. It was a long and tedious process but I'm glad I did it. I love the way it turned out. Here's a close up of some of the beading:

No pattern other than repeating the copper seed beads.

The closure is a polymer clay cabachon with micro beads on the sides. Here's a close up of the bead:

Thursday, October 25, 2012

Howdy, howdy!!! Remember when I was deconstructing watches a while back and made my Gramma's watches into a bracelet? If not you can see it here. Other than my wedding ring I think it is my favorite piece of jewelry I've ever owned. Well as a result of that project I obviously ended up with a lot of parts. Last night I started playing with some things I could do with them. One turned out great, the other, eh. It will be awesome though once I work out the kinks.

Here's a pic of the one that I think turned out:

I tried every photography trick known to man and cannot get it to photograph as well as it looks in real life. But, wow, this was a lot of fun!! I used the watch casings to create a little collage of bits and pieces. There's some old music paper, a stone out of some vintage costume jewelry, a piece of a broken earring, an old sewing closure. I don't have any copper eye pins so I inked them with caramel alcohol ink. Seems to have done the trick.

Here's a close up of just the trinket part:

HHHmmm, may have to give the stainless casing a hit of alcohol ink. But then again, I like eclectic looking things so I may just leave it alone.I am playing along with the Artists in Blogland Fall Fearless and Fly challenge.There are certain prompts and criteria for this challenge so here's my response to those:I took a leap of faith by trying to figure this out on my own. I've done jewelry in the past but it's a challenge to use stainless steel since you can't solder. I love how it turned out and I learned that contact cement helped solve that issue.As strange as it sounds my least favorite (or I should say used) are blue and green. I lean towards purples, reds and browns. As far as the quote prompt, lol!! I was definitely on a wild goose chase coming up with all of these bits and pieces!

Saturday, October 13, 2012

Hi guys! I hope you are all off to a wonderful weekend!! We've had beautiful weather the last few days. Chillier than it has been but sunny and very pretty!

Thursday we had a bunch of running around to do and while out I picked up a few new goodies. My "hauls" anymore usually consist of restocking paints and tape but when Michael's had a 50% of coupon on Martha Stewart stuff, who could resist?? The larger butterfly punch has been on my wish list for a while. So this is what I made:

I first saw this technique done by Lori Craig on SplitcoastStampers.com. I couldn't wait to try it. I filmed the process and you can watch the video here.

I made all of the spray inks I used on this tag with Tulip Fabric Dye, the ones used for tye dying. I LOVE them!! I followed the directions on the package but only used about 1 to 2 teaspoons of the powder dye and about 1/4 cup water for the size misters I use. The only color I wasn't thrilled with was the yellow but I will play around with the mixture. On this tag I used Lime Green, Purple and Turquoise.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

For a long time now I've wanted to come up with a better way to store my Prismacolor pencils. I use them continually and they are always out on my desk. When I first got them I kept them in the original tin because I really do like them seperated into color families. But that got old quick. Then I tried rubber banding them in like colors and keeping in a container. That got old too just because it was a pain to put them back. So I had a play yesterday and I am super excited with what I came up with:

OOhhh, I just LOVE it!! I didn't take pics along the way of the construction because I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out.

One of the my "had to include" was the smaller section in the front for my stumps and pencils that are getting really small. It worked out there is even room to keep my reading glasses.

I had originally planned on using paper tubes leftover from paper towels but was too impatient to wait. So after a call to the hubs he reminded me of the plastic tubes (he has a ton of them!!) that he uses in his golf bag. They look like this:

One tube was enough for the entire project. I also had another awesome discovery. My wood burning kit that I've had for years has a hot knife attachment!! It made cutting these babies to size a breeze!

So here's a few close ups:

Just a shot of one of the empty tubes so you can see how they are nestled down in there.

And a final shot of the dangley's I added to the front. After all I will be looking at it all the time so it might as well be pretty!

Thanks so much for looking and if there is any interest in a tutorial, let me know and I'll see what I can do. Edit added especially for Lynn =o)To create the box itself:From medium chipboard cut2 @ 6"x 3" for the sides1 @ 6"x 3 3/4" for the bottom2 @ 3"x 3 3/4" for front/backYou will also need the following structure strips. You can watch my friend Jen's video here to see how to create those. She is making a completely different project but in the first few minutes she shows how to create the structure strips. The only difference is I only did mine 1" wide.2 @ 6"2 @ 3 3/4"4 @ 3"After I added my structure strips to the bottom and all sides to create my box I cut the following shape for the little box on the front:

I am not sure how that file will save for you but as long as the front and back section are 3 3/4" you should be good to go or obviously you can adjust to fit your needs. Also, I forgot one score line at the end of that long skinnier portion. You can sort of see where it should be scored, right at the points where it tapers.

Monday, October 1, 2012

It's October!!! It's always been a favorite month of mine. My daughter and brother both have birthdays this month. Like that isn't reason enough to love this month we also get to watch the trees change colors and I LOVE that!

For my first project for Dana's Digi's October release at Whimsy Stamps I opted for a tag.

This digi was inspired by my mom who has passed on her love of daisies and mason jars to me.

I printed this on watercolor paper, heat set it and then colored with my Distress Inks. With the stamp pad closed I press the lid down into the ink. This makes a little smudge of ink in the lid and I use that for my palette. The only colors I used were Tumbled Glass, Wild Honey and Dusty Concord.

I used Antique Linen, Tumbled Glass and Dusty Concord to create the background for my tag. I just stamp the pad right onto my ceramic tile (which I use instead of a craft mat) and spritz with water. Then just drag the tag through the ink. I did each color seperately for this one.

Then I distressed the edges with Vintage Photo.

To dye my seam binding to match I just ran the Dusty Concord ink pad over the seam binding.

Then I misted with water, scrunched it up and heat set it to keep that crinkled look:

All that was left was to glue down the image, find a sentiment and add the fibers, which are a beautiful shade of deep purple but look almost black in the above pic. Here's a close up of that awesome sentiment by James Montgomery:

About Me

Just a girl coloring her world one day at a time. Each day is a different blank page, card or canvas waiting to get inky, collaged, drawn on, doodled on, stenciled, .... you get the idea. Art supplies make me happy. Come on, let's make something pretty =0)